So we were debating whether or not we should go to a cabin in central Minnesota for a few days starting on Sunday after church. We had been discussing it over the course Thursday through Saturday and finally came to the decision to not go to the cabin. We decided to go back to Illinois a few days earlier than we had planned. We both felt it was the right decision for us as a family to travel the 7 hours back to Illinois and have a few days of nothing planned before we head to a homeschooling conference all day Friday and Saturday. After church on Sunday we started packing up our stuff. In the evening we received a phone call from Jessie's mom. We have known that Jessie's grandpa (her dad's dad) is starting to go down hill in the past few months. He was now in a nursing home having my father-in-law visit him to help feed him every other day. Well in the last week he was having difficulty swallowing. On Sunday, they decided to stop giving him food. Even now as I write, Jessie is with her parents at the nursing home with the end in sight.

Before we left for Minnesota in March, we did visit it him. He was still up in his wheel chair smiling at times but his speech was incomprehensible. It was good for him to see the kids as well as the kids see him. So even if we had decided to go to a cabin for a few days, Sunday evening we would have been driving back and packing up to head back to Illinois to be with the family. I feel it was the Lord leading us to this decision of going home earlier than we had planned. 

Pray with us that God would use us to be an encouragement during this time of difficulty with losing a family member. This will also be the first death and funeral that our kids have experienced. 

As some of you may have seen already on facebook, on Saturday we started a go-fund-me page to raise funds for a new used car. So if you click on this link below you can donate or for tax deductible giving can be either sent to our mission by check or via Paypal. The go-fund-me page has more info if and an explanation to why we are raising funds for a new car. If you have any questions feel free to email us anytime or call me. I have a cell phone number for while we are stateside 612-300-8063

www.gofundme.com/car-funds-for-the-clark-family

Our mission's website to use Paypal

www.tecatemission.com/?page_id=2115

We are stateside It has been a while since I last posted here. We are doing well. I have an office at the church in Minnesota so I believe I will have more time to update. 

What can I say about the last 8 weeks being stateside? We have been busy. It is so different than normal years when we come home. Usually we are home for less than 6 weeks, so everything is go, go, go. No we are here and we trying to be more diligent about slowing things down and not trying to push to do so much. We are at the beginning of our sabbatical so it takes time to figure out how to live outside the routine of normal life (if there is such a thing). 
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Prayer request: I, Andy am in a season of headaches. I may have described them here before but just in case, I get cluster headaches. Almost every night an hour or so after falling asleep, I wake up with tension starting from top part of my right shoulder, up through my neck, up over the top of my head, then ending underneath my right eye. It will spike with pain and then slowly start to dissipate. Some nights are worse than others where it will slowly go away while other nights it will go away more quickly and I am able to fall back asleep sooner. Some nights it might take over an hour from when I wake up to when I can finally get back to sleep. I use a rice bag to heat up the tension but sometimes nothing helps. The reason this is  called cluster headaches that this can happen up to several weeks to two or three months basically every night. This effects how much sleep I am getting. Please pray for me. Thanks